Lettitor

Dear Reader,

It’s Leyla and Addie here, and if we’re being real, writing this letter feels painfully awkward. It’s hard to pinpoint why it feels so awkward, maybe because we’re writing this into a vague void that we hope you’ll read. Maybe because this letter is a space for us to level with you in a direct, candid way. But that’s what this edition is about after all. 

Aliens, naked ladies, fairies, and the messiness of trying to label ourselves. Our writers, artists, and editors have brought these pieces together in a consideration of what’s real. It’s almost poorly-constructed social commentary that when we asked for submissions for the Real Issue, we got some of the strangest, most surreal pieces we’ve received all year. This edition asks you to reexamine what real means, nestling right into the bizarre, the intimate, and most certainly, the absurd.  

Katie Rowley grapples with the consequences of finding a cursed ring on the floor at a frat party.  Kat Falacienski gives us a delightfully weird screenplay that considers an alternative explanation for the very real virus we’ve all become painfully familiar with. Leigh Rose Walden gets real about what she likes to do in her free time, an homage to the mundane that can make us all feel better about indulging in dull downtime. Logan Smith captures a moment of childhood in frank candor, peeling back layers of innocence for a moment of stark realization.

“Real” is capacious and all-expansive, and at the same time, maybe it doesn’t mean anything at all. In this issue, real might simply mean humans doing what they do best, exploring the weird pockets of life that would otherwise go unexamined.

Sincerely,

Addie, Leyla, and the Cipher team